


The Lovers' Cross

by JanuaryGrey (Jan3693)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Relationship Problems, magical tarot cards, tarot reading
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2020-07-30 10:10:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20095576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jan3693/pseuds/JanuaryGrey
Summary: It’s October, 1981 and everything seems like it’s reaching a terrible breaking point when Sirius asks Remus to help him with a tarot reading that may hold the key to their future.





	1. The Moon, Upright

**Author's Note:**

> All images are cards from the Rider-Waite tarot deck. The photos were all taken by me, and the Lover's Cross spread is something I made up for this fic.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> XVIII The Moon, Upright: Clarity, illusion, anxiety, secrets, light in the darkness, intuition.

Sirius sat at the scuffed old kitchen table, surveying the elaborate array of cards laid out before him. He’d been hoping for answers, for direction, but all he’d found was tragedy.

Never taking his eyes off the cards, Sirius raised the stub of his cigarette to his lips and inhaled. His friends would laugh if they could see this, the blatant evidence of his desperation. Well, maybe they wouldn’t laugh. There wasn’t much laughter to go around these days. More likely than not, they would pity him, probably even worry about his sanity. 

Poor, delusional Sirius Black, trying to win the war with nothing but a deck of tarot cards.

His friends had always taken the piss out of him for his interest in divination. Even Lily had gotten in on the joke. Last Christmas she’d bought Sirius a black plastic ball with the number 8 painted on it. It had a small window that answered “Yes-No” questions when someone shook the ball. He’d been fascinated with the Muggle divination device until Lily had explained that it was nothing more than a toy.

Sirius didn’t mind it, not much anyway. They all took the piss out of each other for one thing or another—James’s hair, Remus’s chocolate, Peter’s gullibility. That was part of how their friendship worked. 

The truth was, Sirius’s family had always respected divination as an ancient art. His great aunt cast runes, his father owned a collection of crystal balls, and his mother drew up detailed horoscopes for births and weddings. Though he’d done his best to shake off the bigotry and snobbery he’d grown up with, Sirius had never lost that near reverence for divination.

He was no seer. Sirius knew that he was never going to speak prophecies or see the future with crystal clarity, but he didn’t discount the idea that there were insights to be gained from the world around him, patterns that could be discerned and decoded. 

That had always been a comfort to Sirius. Until this last year, when all his readings had turned dark and dire, warning of misfortune and calamity.

They hadn’t been wrong either.

Sirius took one last drag from his cigarette and dropped the butt into an empty teacup that had been pushed to the very edge of the table by the enormity of his tarot spread. As he exhaled through his nostrils, he picked up the very last card in the spread. This was the one that was supposed to represent the answer to his question, the outcome of everything.

He turned it face up.

Ten swords stabbed the fallen body of a man. He lay facedown in the mud, but Sirius recognized the messy black hair and the glasses that lay broken beside his limp hand. Sometimes, the figure in the card resembled Remus or Peter or Lily, but most of the time it was James.

This was the future Sirius had seen in so many of his tarot readings, in the leaves at the bottom of his teacups, even in the stars above his head. 

The Ten of Swords.

Loss. Destruction. Betrayal. Death.

The End.

This was what was coming for them all if he couldn’t figure out how to stop it.

Cursing under his breath, Sirius swept a hand across the spread, knocking the cards out of place into an anarchic jumble. The Ten of Swords disappeared into the mix with all the rest of them. 

When the cards were gathered, Sirius tapped the deck into a straight, orderly stack. Then he shuffled again. Maybe, maybe if he could just find the right question, he might get a different answer. Maybe he could find a path out of this darkness. The only question running through his head though was _how do I fix it? How do I make it right?_ Too vague and unfocused to produce any real answers. 

Still, when the cards felt right, Sirius stopped shuffling. He cut the deck once and drew the top card, setting it face down on the table.

“What are you doing?” 

Sirius jumped, his knee banging the underside of the table. The cards went skittering out of his hands, spilling across the table.

Remus stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the sitting room. He was carrying one of the many teacups he habitually abandoned around the flat when he became distracted by something else. People always assumed Remus was the tidy one in their relationship, but if it wasn’t for Sirius, their flat would be a maze of misplaced books and forgotten teacups.

“I, um…” Sirius looked over the table, realizing how mad the whole thing must seem to Remus. Rather than piece together an answer, Sirius stood so he could reach across the table and scrape the cards back into a pile.

Floorboards creaked as Remus crossed into the kitchen. He was frowning with some cross between curiosity and irritation, as though Sirius was a child who’d made a mess while playing with his toys at the kitchen table. Sirius wished he could feel his own corresponding flash of annoyance at Remus, for the interruption, for the look on his face, for all his disappearances and lies, even for the damned teacups. Instead, he just felt a tightness in his chest, like he was suffocating. 

“Nothing,” Sirius said. “It’s nothing.” 

It was too late though. Remus was already at the table, standing across from Sirius. He reached out and picked up a card that sat apart from the spilled mess of the rest of the deck. It was the one card Sirius had managed to lay down in his new spread.

Remus’s frown deepened, furrowing his brow. Sirius took the moment to study his boyfriend, taking in the weight Remus had lost, the thin strands of grey already flecking his brown hair, and the general air of ill health that seemed to have settled on Remus’s shoulders like a cloak. The moon was a thin crescent just beginning to wax, but Remus looked ready to fall asleep on his feet.

It was the war. It was taking a toll on them all, Sirius included. He wasn’t wasting away like Remus, but he’d had more than his fair share of pain and suffering in the past few years. 

The trauma went deeper than scars or exhaustion though. It had left nothing untouched, nothing undamaged. This damn war had been systematically destroying everything in Sirius’s life for the last three years, and now, if there was any truth in his predictions, it was coming for the people Sirius cared about the most.

“Tarot cards, right?” Remus asked, looking over the card he’d picked up. He wrinkled his nose in distaste before handing it back to Sirius. “You were doing a reading?” He made that a question too.

Remus had given him the card face down. The tightness, the pressure, in Sirius’s chest increased. For a moment, Sirius considered just slipping it back into the deck. He knew all of the cards that had been in the spread he’d just done. Most of them hadn’t been happy cards. He knew that, if he looked, he would attach meaning to it, he would connect it to Remus in some way. There were already questions and doubts gnawing at his edges of his mind. The last thing Sirius wanted was to do was feed them.

And yet, he needed to know. 

Sirius turned the card until he could see its face. Yes, he could see why Remus would have picked up this card, and why he would have found it objectionable.

It was the Moon. 

Unlike Remus, Sirius felt himself softening at the sight of the card. Remus hadn’t looked at it for more than a moment and likely as not hadn’t noticed anything beyond the unnaturally large and full moon that dominated the card. Had he even seen the figures below? The back dog and the wolf who romped by the shores of the Black Lake, with both Hogwarts and the Shrieking Shack in the background. 

This was _their_ card. 

Of course, that didn’t automatically mean it was always a good card to draw. Tarot cards were flexible, that was one of the reasons Sirius liked them. Cards could develop personal subtexts beyond the standard meanings each card was assigned. Those standard meanings didn’t go away though. The Moon was the card that represented his and Remus’s relationship, but it had other connotations as well.

“Sirius?” 

He startled again at the sound of Remus’s voice. 

“Are you all right?” Remus asked. The way he said it implied this wasn’t the first time he’d asked the question. 

“Yeah, fine,” Sirius lied. Remus was frowning again, but now he looked concerned. It was touching, actually. Things had been going so bad between them lately cycling through vicious fights, awkward silences, and cruelly ignoring one another. He’d missed Remus’s concern, just like he missed his laughter and his smile. 

They were so much less than they’d once been. 

“Would you, er, like some tea?” Remus asked. He held up his own teacup to illustrate the offer. His tone sounded forced, and he shifted uncomfortably on his feet, like he wanted nothing more than to turn on his heel and flee to avoid the wretched tension that had grown between them. He didn’t though. Remus stayed where he was.

He was trying, Sirius realized. For the first time in what felt like a very long time, Remus was _trying_ to reach out to him.

“Tea sounds good,” Sirius replied. Remus gave him one last look of puzzled apprehension before nodding and turning toward the kettle.

As Remus busied himself making tea, Sirius turned his attention back to the card he held. There were many ways of interpreting the Moon, and some of them were very dark. Illusion, anxiety, secrets, and hidden dangers all lurked within the card Sirius now held. 

His mind flashed back to the Ten of Swords that had ended his last spread and all that it meant. Pairing that card with the Moon did not paint a pretty picture. In fact, it drew Sirius’s mind in a direction he had been fighting against for months.

There was a traitor in the Order of the Phoenix.

They all knew it, had known it since summer when Order members had started dying faster than lacewing flies. Someone within the Order itself was selling mission details, names, safe house locations, and even home addresses to Voldemort and his supporters.

People were whispering and pointing fingers, and quite a few of them had started pointing at Remus. 

Sirius didn’t want to believe it. He’d started fights when others had suggested as much. And yet, at some point in the last few months, lying alone in the bed he was supposed to be sharing with Remus, Sirius had started to let the doubt sink in. 

Sirius hated himself for it, but once he’d cracked opened the doors he’d found it impossible to reclose them entirely. He loved Remus, would do anything for him, would die for him, but were those very feelings blinding Sirius to what everyone else seemed to see? 

He couldn't afford to live with that doubt anymore. Not after the conversation he’d had with James and Lily just last night. Not when the lives of his best friend’s entire family were on the line.

There was another interpretation of the Moon though, a small voice in his head reminded Sirius. Sometimes, the moon could stand for clarity, bringing light to the darkness and illuminating hidden truths. 

Down on the card, the wolf and the dog were no longer frolicking with each other. Instead, they sat on opposite sides of the path that wound through the middle of the card, regarding each other with caution.

Sometimes the cards were ambiguous, but sometimes their meaning was pretty damn obvious.

“Earl Grey, rosehip, or Assam?” Remus asked. When Sirius turned toward him, he found Remus holding tins for the latter two options up for his review. 

“The rosehip, please,” Sirius replied. He didn’t need any caffeine making him jumpier than he already was right now.

Sirius placed the Moon face up in the middle of the table and gathered up the rest of the cards and shuffled. The cards slid like a river through Sirius’s fingers. They seemed to whisper as they slipped against one another and tumbled from his right hand to his left. Sirius tapped the deck into a neat stack and set them down just below the Moon. 

This was probably a bad idea, but the alternatives were worse. James, Lily, and Harry needed to be protected, and Sirius needed to know if he could trust the man he loved.

Remus carried two steaming cups of tea over to the table. He set Sirius’s on the table, but didn’t put down his own. Remus didn’t plan to stay in the kitchen and share the table with his lover. He turned to leave, but before he could, Sirius caught him by the wrist.

“Will you do a reading with me?” He asked.

Sirius could feel the tension in the tendons and muscles beneath his fingers. Remus wasn’t looking at him. His eyes were fixed on some point out of the kitchen and down the hall. Anywhere but on Sirius.

“You know I don’t believe in that,” Remus said tersely.

Sirius swallowed, but he didn’t let go of Remus’s wrist. “Humor me…please?”

This was the sort of thing they used to do all the time: indulge each other even in the interests they didn’t share. Sirius would carefully listen to Remus ramble about on about Muggle novels he never had and never would read, and Remus would let Sirius read his palm or tea leaves. These days though, they barely even indulged in the things they both enjoyed, let alone each other’s separate passions.

Remus seemed frozen, like a rabbit faced with a fox. He finally turned enough to look at Sirius. There was worry in his eyes, confusion and frustration as well. Sirius suddenly felt stupid, childish. This was a terrible idea.

He let go of Remus’s wrist. His hands fluttered down to the tabletop, tapping against the wood.

There was a sigh, and the scrape of the chair across the table as Remus sat down.

“Sirius…is something wrong?” Remus asked. “Did something happen last night…when you went to James and Lily’s?”

The tattoo of Sirius’s fingers against the wood stopped suddenly, leaving utter silence in its wake. Something had most definitely happened at James and Lily’s house last night. His best friend’s family was under siege. James and Lily and even innocent little Harry were all at the very top of Voldemort’s kill list, and they were trusting Sirius to protect them. They wanted _him_ to be their Secret Keeper. 

It was all on the tip of Sirius’s tongue as he stared across the table at Remus. He wanted to tell Remus everything, but something held him back. 

James and Lily hadn’t invited Remus when they’d asked Sirius over. Did that mean something? Did they not trust Remus anymore? What did it mean if even James and Lily suspected Remus of betraying them? Sirius felt acid burn in his throat. He took a scalding hot drink of his tea to swallow the rising taste of vomit back down, and to cover at least some of his prolonged silence.

His eyes drifted back to the Moon card sitting halfway between himself and Remus. The dog and the wolf still seemed cautious of each other, but as he watched, the black dog approached the wolf, sniffing. Sirius felt his lips twitch in a feeble attempt at a smile.

“This is our card, you know,” Sirius said. “Us, our relationship. It practically came out of the box ready-made for the two of us.”

Remus sighed again and gave the string attached to his teabag an annoyed tug. “So I can’t escape the moon even on a bloody tarot card?” he asked.

Sirius let his fingers drift to the card, tracing the path that cut through the center of the scene leading to the lake in the foreground. The wolf and the dog both followed his movement, their heads swiveling, ears alert.

“We had fun back then, even you,” Sirius said. “Besides, the cards are more than just the pictures.”

“We were reckless, stupid,” Remus replied. “Do you know how lucky we were that no one was ever hurt or killed on our little escapades?”

Sirius pulled his hand away from the card and tried not to flinch. “Do you regret it?” He asked quietly.

Remus was looking at the card now, finally _really_ looking at it. They both watched as the black dog tentatively licked the wolf’s face, his tail wagging. The wolf’s tail gave a small thump as well.

“No…” Remus said. “I know I probably should but no, I don’t regret it.”

The dog on the card dropped the front half of his body into a bow, his rear end up in the air as he invited the wolf to run and play. The wolf cocked his head, tail wagging a bit more even as his body tensed. Padfoot was off like a shot down the path.

“What does it mean?” Remus asked, watching as Moony raced after Padfoot, their already small forms vanishing among the trees at the edge of the card. They would be back sooner or later. 

“The card, I mean,” Remus said when Sirius looked up at him with a raised eyebrow. “What does the card mean, beyond the obvious?” 

“Secrets, illusion, anxieties, sometimes dreams or difficult decision, crises of faith…deception…”

Remus snorted and his lips twisted in a cynical, almost fatalistic way. “Not an encouraging card to have represent our relationship,” Remus said.

“It’s not all bad. The Moon can also indicate clarity and intuition. It can illuminate hidden truths. It can even imply the release of fears, or an important decision to be made.”

“So, what do you think it means this time?” Remus asked. He sounded…cautious, almost worried. Sirius tried to rein in his imagination as his mind buzzed wondering what _that_ meant.

Sirius took a deep breath, then another, trying to calm the thoughts that bashed around his skull like Bludgers. This was the part of divination he struggled with. Sirius had always been good at making intuitive leaps and following his instincts, but quieting his mind, digging deep inside himself and considering all the variables. That part often eluded him.

“I think…I think this time it’s all of it. Everything, good and bad. Mostly though, it’s us. Just you and me,” Sirius said. 

He reached out again, this time for the rest of the deck in their neat, facedown stack. The Moon he left where it was near the center of the table.

When he’d handed Sirius the Moon card, Remus had quite literally put their relationship in Sirius’s hands. Now he needed to follow that moonlit path through the darkness. 

And he needed Remus to come with him.

“Will you do a reading with me Moony?” Sirius asked as he offered the tarot deck to Remus.


	2. Two of Swords, Upright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two of Swords, Upright: Confusion, indecision, informational overload, suspicion.

Remus tried to tamp down his irritation, as Sirius held out the deck of cards to him, but it wasn’t easy. It was barely mid-morning, far too early for this sort of nonsense. He nearly told Sirius as much, but there was something in Sirius’s voice, a particular tightness that stopped him. 

When he’d come in to the kitchen to find Sirius bent over the card-covered table, Remus had wondered if his boyfriend was drunk. It wouldn’t be the first time the contents of the liquor cabinet had found their way into Sirius’s morning coffee. Or, he might have just been hungover from whatever he’d been up to last night.

Supposedly, Sirius had gone to James and Lily’s for dinner, but he’d flooed home well after midnight wreathed in the smell of stale beer and cigarettes. After slurring an answer to Remus’s security question, Sirius had turned into Padfoot and promptly fallen asleep on the sofa.

This morning, Sirius was still wearing yesterday’s clothes and his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like hell, unshaven and exhausted, his fingers constantly twitching. It couldn’t all be explained away by alcohol though.

No, something else was definitely wrong. 

Remus looked between the tarot cards Sirius was still holding out to him and his frazzled, half-manic boyfriend. Divination was something that comforted Sirius. Remus understood that, and he tried to respect it, even if he didn’t believe in it himself. However, Sirius didn’t seem to be taking any joy in it this morning. He seemed frantic, almost…almost afraid.

“You know I don’t believe in that,” Remus said. He looked away from the cards, and from Sirius. He’d been doing that a lot lately. They both had been.

Sirius didn’t turn away now though. He used his foot to push out the chair across the table for Remus. “Humor me…please?” 

Remus bit the inside of his cheek. He supposed this was Sirius trying. This was Sirius making some sort of effort to bridge the growing chasm between them, for better or worse. It was sincere, even if it was absurd. Not that Remus had a better plan to salvage their failing relationship. He’d been home for the better part of a week, and he’d barely had the guts to talk to Sirius at all in that time. 

It was the war; it was weighing on everyone and everything. The distance it was putting between him and Sirius just hurt the most.

Remus grimaced as he gingerly took the deck of tarot cards, handling them as he might something slimy or dangerous. The worn pasteboard cards certainly weren’t slimy against his fingers, but Remus wasn’t convinced they were harmless.

Sirius didn’t smile like he once would have when he got his way. The only time he seemed to smile these days was in the middle of a fight. With curses flying around his head and people dying, Sirius grinned like he was having the time of his life.

He set his tea mug on the table and sat back down in the chair Sirius had scooted out for him. “What am I supposed to do?” Remus asked. 

“Just shuffle the deck a few times,” Sirius said. His shoulders had lost a bit of their stiffness when Remus had taken the cards from him, but his voice was still tight. 

Remus did what he was told. He didn’t have Sirius’s elegant, showy ways of doing it, but he could manage well enough. 

“So, what are we trying to do here?” Remus asked, looking at the pattern on the back of the top card as he cut the deck. It was a colorful, almost floral twist of lines and curls wrapping around stars. “Are we predicting how the war’s going to end?”

He’d meant it as a joke. A wretched, cruel joke, but a joke all the same. Sirius laughed, but it was just as wretched and bitter. 

“Don’t think I haven’t tried, Moony,” Sirius said, sober and unsmiling. Remus nearly fumbled his shuffle in surprise.

“You have?”

Sirius shrugged and shook his head. His chair scratched across the floorboards as he pushed it back and stood. “It’s too big, too complicated, and I’m no seer,” Sirius said. “I need a _real_ drink. You want anything?”

Remus watched him walk over to the cabinet where they kept the alcohol. “Whatever you’re having,” Remus said. It was early, but fuck it, he was going to need a stiff drink to get through this rubbish. “And, for the record, seers aren’t even seers,” Remus retorted. “At least, not how most people think of them. It’s all choices and probabilities. Even a prophecy is just the greatest probability made at a certain time under certain circumstances. The most likely path, not the only one.”

It was an old argument, one that Sirius had never precisely disputed. Instead, he’d always argued that just because divination was a flawed science didn’t mean it wasn’t useful. As he returned with a bottle of beetle berry whiskey and two glasses, Sirius shrugged again. “Yes, but trying to predict the future can tell you a lot about what you _want_ the future to look like.”

There was a gravity to Sirius’s words, and Remus realized they weren’t playing a game. He’d thought this was Sirius’s way of trying to lighten the mood, an icebreaker to start them talking to each other again, even if it was just to bicker about the merits of divination. 

He’d misjudged the situation though, and misjudged Sirius, who hadn’t cracked a smile or batted an eye at Remus’s jab. This definitely wasn’t a game. It was something important and possibly dangerous.

“Right, so we’re not trying to take down Voldemort with tarot cards,” Remus said as he watched Sirius pour him a generous dram of shimmering purple whiskey. He transferred the cards to one hand and grabbed it right away, downing half of it. Remus savored the bite of it along his tongue and the warmth of it in his stomach. “So, what are part of the future are we trying to unfog then?”

“Us,” Sirius said simply.

The whiskey curdled in Remus’s stomach. Sirius wasn’t looking at him, he was too busy pouring himself a drink as the world crashed down around Remus. He recalled the words Sirius had just spoken. 

_“Trying to predict the future can tell you a lot about what you _want_ the future to look like.”_

Sirius was trying to predict their future together.

He was trying to decide if he wanted a future with Remus.

“You’re questioning us?” Remus asked. He wanted to sound angry, to yell, but his voice broke on the words and his throat was so tight he could hardly breathe, let alone shout.

Sirius looked up at him, exhausted and forlorn. “Aren’t you?” he asked.

“So you think playing a bloody card game is the solution?” Remus scoffed. He slapped the deck against the table hard enough to make it wobble and everything slide out of place.

“Do you have a better idea?” Sirius asked. He sounded like he sincerely hoped Remus did, in fact, have a better idea.

“We can just…_talk_ to each other,” Remus said, but even as he said it, he realized he wasn’t sure they could. He tried to think of a place to start, a question to ask, a statement, a demand, a plea. His tongue tied and his mind seemed to crumple under the pressure. Sirius’s face said he felt the same. 

“I want to see a future with you, Remus,” Sirius said. He reached out and laid a hand over the one Remus still had covering the deck of cards. “But with everything happening…most days I have a hard time seeing any future at all.”

Remus closed his eyes and swallowed around the lump in his throat. Sirius wasn’t wrong about anything he’d just said. They were falling apart already, had been for a while, and Remus didn’t know how to stop it.

He opened his eyes and stared at the deck of cards sitting so innocently before him. A spread of tarot cards seemed like a flimsy thing to hang their future on, but if that was all that was left to them…

Remus picked the cards back up. “What now?” he asked.

Sirius let out a long sigh, and Remus thought he could see a spark of hope on his boyfriend’s face. 

“There’s a spread called the lovers’ cross,” Sirius explained. He traced a pattern around the Moon card still sitting face up on the table. “It’s supposed to help with…with troubled relationships…”

He tapped the Moon. “I drew this before, and I think it’s supposed to be our first card. The first card in the spread is supposed to represent the person—or people—doing the reading and our present situation.” 

“Secrets, anxieties, and deception, right?” Remus asked a bit bitterly.

“And clarity and intuition,” Sirius added. “I drew this card, so now it’s your turn. Lay this one horizontally across the Moon—face down for now.”

They took turns laying out another eight cards across the table in the same rhombus-shaped pattern Sirius had traced out earlier. On the surface, it was simple enough, but every card came loaded with heavy questions. It required Remus to think about things he didn’t want to consider, let alone say out loud.

Remus wasn’t even sure he was doing it correctly. Certainly, his mind wasn’t clear and focused as Sirius had advised him to make it, but then Sirius himself looked about as calm and focused as a niffler in Gringotts.

When the final card had been placed, Sirius tapped the first card Remus had laid down, the one lying across the Moon. “This one is the cross card,” Sirius said. “It represents the problem or obstacle we need to overcome.”

“Just one?” Remus asked sarcastically.

“It’s the most pressing or important one at this moment,” Sirius said. His shoulders stiffened a bit defensively and Remus decided not to press the issue. 

Sirius flipped the cross card over and placed it back across the Moon.

Remus blinked in surprise. On the card, a person who bore a vague resemblance to Sirius held two swords upraised. His arms were crossed over his chest and the blades of both swords were pressed dangerously close to his neck and the sides of his face. He was blindfolded, a frown of either concentration or pain creasing his brow and tugging at his lips. Despite the image being clearly magical, the young man barely moved. A phantom breeze ruffled his short hair, and the waves of the ocean painted in the background lapped gently against the shore, but he held carefully still, only the barest tremble shooting through his limbs and shaking the swords in his hands.

That tension, the rigidly held stillness seemed to seep right out of the card and clutch at Remus’s breath. It was an effort of will to swallow and break the silence.

“Is that…Regulus?” Remus asked, his heart suddenly aching for Sirius. 

The question seemed to jolt Sirius out of his own intense contemplation of the card before them. He frowned, but nodded.

“Magical tarot cards…They’re pretty generic looking when you buy them, but as you use them they sort of…adapt.” Sirius sounded almost embarrassed. “They take on personal significance, settings turn into familiar places, and sometimes the people start to look like real people…people who are important to me or who I associate with the meanings behind certain cards.”

Remus had to wonder how many cards his own face appeared on, and, more importantly, what they might mean.

“It’s not a conscious decision,” Sirius said hastily, as though he could sense Remus’s unspoken questions. “They draw from my memories, my feelings, my wants…and my fears. Then they change into whatever fits best at the time.”

He trailed off with a sigh and reached out to tap the card sharply, as though he were annoyed with it. The painted Regulus flinched, his swords trembling. “If I had any say in the matter, I wouldn’t have Regulus show up anywhere in my deck, or my parents for that matter, but they’re all here, because they’re all still in my ruddy head.”

Sirius’s father and younger brother were both dead, and his mother had shut herself up in their old house, but they all still had the power to hurt Sirius. They always had. 

The pain and conflicted anger on Sirius’s face stirred protective feelings in Remus’s chest. Those urges felt almost animalistic, a call to snarl and snap and put himself between the man he loved and anything that would dare to hurt him. He settled for reaching out and laying a comforting hand over Sirius’s, hiding the card with Regulus’s face beneath their palms.

“We don’t have to do this,” Remus said. 

The hand beneath Remus’s slipped away, pulling back as Sirius shook his head. “No, it’s fine,” he said. “There’s a reason I associate Regulus with the Two of Swords.”

“All right then, what does it mean?” Remus asked. He moved his own hand away, revealing the card again. If Sirius was determined to do this, then he needed to know what the hell was going on.

Sirius bit his lip, suddenly hesitant again. Now Remus really wanted to know what the card represented. 

“The Two of Swords can mean a lot of things: balance, a truce…but usually not in a permanent or positive sense. It can also indicate indecision, confusion, suspicion…and choices that need to be made.”

They lapsed into silence as Remus considered Sirius’s explanation. At least now he understood now why it was Regulus holding those two swords close enough to slit his own throat. 

Sirius had loved his brother as fiercely as he’d hated him. They’d been opposites in many ways, but from what Sirius had said about his early childhood, those differences hadn’t divided them, not until Hogwarts houses had literally divided them. Before that, quiet, contemplative Regulus and bold, boisterous Sirius had balanced each other, but those differences had won out when the brothers had chosen different sides in the brewing war. Regulus had ultimately regretted his choices though, and he’d died trying to flee Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

“Right, so now what?” Remus asked. The card might be fitting for Sirius and his brother, but it didn’t feel accurate for _their_ current situation. Remus and Sirius were certainly not in balance, though Remus was definitely feeling some confusion…and possibly some suspicion.

Despite this whole thing being his idea, Sirius looked almost as uncertain as Remus felt. “If I was doing a reading for myself I would think about what the card means and where I see those things in my life, how they apply to me, to the present situation, or to whatever question I was trying to ask.”

He paused and looked over at Remus, assessing and cautious. “This is supposed to be a reading for both of us though, so I can’t be the only one to interpret things.” 

Remus felt like he’d just been called on in class to answer a question he didn’t understand. It irritated him. “You were the one who wanted to do this, Sirius. _I_ don’t know the first thing about tarot cards or any of this shite—”

“Which is why I just explained what the card is supposed to mean!” Sirius replied. His own frustration was simmering just below the skin and gleaming in the steel of his grey eyes.

“Don’t snap at me, Sirius. This wasn’t my idea,” Remus reminded Sirius. 

“If you don’t want to be here then walk away, Remus. You’ve gotten good at that lately,” Sirius shot back.

“And you haven’t?” Remus asked. “You spend half your nights sleeping on James and Lily’s sofa and the other half as a dog.”

It was a low blow, especially with a card featuring Regulus lying on the table. Remus saw it in the way Sirius winced. Retreating into Padfoot was one of the ways he dealt with stress and painful emotions. When Sirius had heard about Regulus’s death he’d spent days almost entirely in his animagus form. Remus wanted to take it back, but he bit his tongue instead.

“And where do you spend most of your nights, Remus?” Sirius asked, venomous as a cobra. “Because it sure as hell isn’t here. It isn’t with James or Lily or any of our friends, and it isn’t with me!” 

Remus was not an angry person, not by nature or by choice. He didn’t have the luxury of it, because angry werewolves frightened people even more than regular werewolves. Yet—Merlin and Morgana help him—Sirius had always been able to test the boundaries of Remus’s control. Both in good ways, and in bad ones. Remus pushed his chair away from the table, ready to storm out of the room. This was the first real fight they’d had in months and—

Surprise drained the anger right out of Remus, and he dropped heavily back into his chair. 

“This is the first real fight we’ve had in months,” Remus said. Sirius glared at him, clearly ready to keep the argument going.

“So?” Sirius asked sharply when Remus didn’t continue his train of thought.

“It’s the first fight we’ve had in months because we’ve both been tiptoeing around, trying to avoid this exact thing,” Remus said, realizing it was painfully true. He and Sirius had always fought, long before they were ever living together or even dating. It was a fact of life, but also a part of who they were. They argued, but they also listened and apologized and worked things out. Or they had before.

Sirius’s mouth dropped open, silently mouthing a startled _“oh!”_ as he caught on to Remus’s realization. 

“There’s our balance,” Sirius said bitterly. “Our truce. Going out of our way to avoid fighting with each other.”

“And to avoid talking to each other at all.” 

It wasn’t just the fights they were missing. Once, they’d had long, winding conversations that followed them through hours or even days, filled with shared memories, odd tangents, playful bickering, and bad jokes. That had been slowly devolving into stilted small talk and awkward silences to the point where they’d barely even exchanged pleasantries about the weather these past few days.

Sirius nodded. They were both guilty here. They’d both retreated into silence rather than try and confront the mounting tension. Remus could see the confusion and indecision suggested by the Two of Swords lurking in their silences, even the suspicion. That just left the bit about choices that needed to be made. 

He met Sirius’s gaze and saw all of his own awkwardness and fears reflected there. They should stop this and talk, but Remus still wasn’t sure where to start unravelling the Gordian Knot they’d made of things. Instead, he asked, “What’s the next card?”


	3. Eight of Swords, Upright & the Wheel of Fortune, Reversed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eight of Swords, Upright: Imprisonment, isolation, helplessness, restrictions, fear  
Wheel of Fortune, Reversed: Bad Luck, external forces, lack of control, unwelcome change, set backs

The third card in the spread was Sirius’s. It sat below and slightly to the left of the first two cards, closer to Sirius’s side of the table. It represented Sirius himself as he was at that moment, all his thoughts and feelings and actions rolled into one little card. Remus had a mirroring card next to it on the right, but Sirius had set up the spread so he would go first. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. He knew what he was doing and Remus didn’t, so it was just good sense.

Now he regretted it. 

He picked up the card, but when he saw what was on it, he hesitated. 

He didn’t want Remus to see this. 

For a moment he’d been caught off-guard by the similarities to the Two of Swords, and he thought the figure in the card was Regulus again. However, Regulus as depicted in the Two of Swords had held painfully still, terrified of cutting himself on the sharp blades he held. That was true to form. Sirius’s little brother had always been the careful one, the one who could be cowed by their parents’ punishments and promises into thinking as they thought he should, behaving as they thought he should.

No, the figure on this card was Sirius himself, bloody, blindfolded, bound, and surrounded by eight tall swords. 

Grimacing, he finally set the card down so Remus could see it too.

“Is that _you_?” Remus asked. The table wobbled as he leaned in to get a better look. 

Remus sounded incredulous, horrified even. Sirius couldn’t blame him, even he found it difficult to watch this other version of himself struggle and throw his body against the bars of his sharp-edged cage. The painted figure was relentless, battering himself futilely against the blades, staggering back each time with more and more red lines cutting through his clothes and skin.

Sirius didn’t stop Remus when he plucked the card from Sirius’s own half-numb fingers and looked closer at it, but he wanted to. 

“This is how you see our relationship?” Remus asked. The hurt in his face only made the tightness in Sirius’s chest worse. 

Sirius sucked in a shaky breath before he could answer. “No, not our relationship,” he said. “This is how I see myself, my life.”

Remus did not look reassured. Sirius took the card back from him and placed it face up in its proper position within the spread. The smaller version of him never stopped bashing and cutting himself against his bladed prison.

These were old feelings, things Sirius had thought were in his past. Things had been better, after he’d run away, for a while at least. He hadn’t felt like that blind little figure uselessly hurling himself against enormous swords while he was living with the Potters. Those last two years of school had been so good. Then they’d left Hogwarts, entering both adulthood and a warzone at the same time. Lots of old wounds had been ripping open since then. 

Sirius closed his eyes, knowing he wouldn’t be able to say what needed to be said if he had to look Remus in the eye while he did it. “I used to get the Eight of Swords a lot, back when I first started reading tarot cards for myself.” 

He could hear Remus shifting in his seat, uncomfortable and uncertain what to do about it. It was pathetic how much Sirius wanted Remus to come running to his side and pull him into his arms and just hold him. He wanted to confess everything and cling to Remus like he had so many times before.

Instead, they both stayed on their respective sides of the table. 

“Back when you first started reading tarot cards,” Remus repeated, sorting something out in his head. “Back at school? In what, third year? Fourth?” Remus asked. The concern was back in his voice, but he didn’t reach across the chasm between them. He didn’t move to comfort Sirius, and Sirius didn’t move toward him either. 

“Yeah,” Sirius said, opening his eyes again. Remus almost looked thoughtful now as he regarded the Eight of Swords card. “It indicates isolation, imprisonment, restrictions…helplessness…fear. I used to feel that way all the time.”

Remus swallowed and met Sirius’s eyes. “Your family.”

It wasn’t a question. Remus knew him well enough to know what ghosts haunted Sirius. He had grown up secluded and indoctrinated, punished and hurt by his parents, and literally imprisoned at times within the walls of Grimmauld Place.

Sirius hated feeling like he was that scared, angry little boy again. Things had been so much better—_he_ had been so much better—after the Potters had taken him in. This war wasn’t something he could run away from though.

“I feel helpless,” Sirius said. It came out like a gasp. “People are dying around me, our _friends_ are dying or in constant danger. Marlene, Dorcas, and the Prewetts are gone. James and Lily can’t leave their own fucking house. You come home from missions you won’t tell me about looking half-dead, Remus…And I can’t do anything to make it stop. I can’t do anything to make it better, to protect any of you.”

“Oh, Sirius.” Remus probably meant it to sound comforting, but those two words rang with condescension in Sirius’s ears. When Remus finally did reach for him, Sirius shrank back out of his reach.

“Don’t,” he hissed from between clenched, grinding teeth. “I know it’s a stupid thing to say. I know this is a war and that it’s too big for anyone to solve or win on their own, but I feel so _powerless_. I need to do something, _anything!_ What good am I if I can’t protect the people I love, if I can’t make this world a better place for them?”

He curled his lip as he gestured at the version of himself still staggering about and bleeding himself dry on the swords that caged him. “This is literally the most useful thing I’ve done in weeks! Playing with tarot cards and trying to find some way of preventing the doom I see in every spread. Merlin, I’m pathetic, aren’t I?” He let out a choking little laugh and blinked back the tears that threatened to fall. 

Shaking his head, Sirius looked up at Remus, who had both hands around his nearly empty glass of whiskey. He couldn’t Read Remus’s carefully blank face. Sirius laughed again. Remus probably thought he was a madman, laughing and crying and screaming over a bloody tarot card. Maybe he was. 

“You’re not useless or pathetic, Sirius,” Remus said. “Everything you do for the Order: that _matters_. You’ve saved lives. You’ve saved my life and James’s and Lily’s and Peter’s. You’re a good friend…a good partner. You matter to the people you love, even if you were the most useless sod in Britain—which you’re not.”

Maybe Remus was right, but they were still caught in this war. What if Sirius failed the next time? What if his friends died because he wasn’t good enough or fast enough or because he wasn’t even there? 

After all, he hadn’t been there for Regulus. 

Sirius glanced back over at the Two of Swords. 

Merlin, he was bloody terrified all the time, and it was driving him crazy. He felt mad in all the varied definitions of the word. 

Why was Remus even still here? What could he possibly see in Sirius these days? This near-rabid shadow of a man he had become. Remus might try to tear himself apart every full moon, but Sirius was frenzied and feral enough to tear himself apart while fully human.

He hated those feelings so much. He hated feeling trapped and useless and _weak_. Suddenly this game of his seemed stupid, another futile, childish act that would accomplish nothing and help no one. He wanted to reach out and petulantly swipe the cards off the table, to scatter them and forget whatever they had to tell him.

Remus must have sensed his intentions. That wouldn’t be surprising; Remus had always been good predicting Sirius’s stormy moods. Until the last few months he’d been good at weathering them too. What was surprising was that Remus, who definitely did not believe in the power of divination, reached out and turned over the next card in the spread before Sirius could destroy it all.

***

Remus turned over the card that was supposed to represent himself, hoping it would give Sirius a moment to collect himself.

The card was upside-down. The legend that should have been at the bottom of the card was at the top, and Remus’s mind was half a second slower translating the inverted letters. 

“The Wheel of Fortune,” Sirius said out loud, “reversed.” His voice still sounded on the edge of hysteria, but he was fighting it down, pulling himself back together as he focused on this new card. 

Frowning, Remus drank down the last of his whiskey and contemplated the card. His first reaction had been the same bitter black humor that he’d felt when he saw the Moon card, but this time it was tinged with confusion. The meaning of the Wheel of Fortune seemed fairly straightforward, and Remus could only assume that finding it in the reversed position had a straightforward explanation as well. 

Right side up: good luck. Upside down: bad luck.

And wasn’t that just the story of Remus’s life. Bad fucking luck.

Only…it wasn’t. Not entirely.

Yes, there had been a lifetime’s worth of ill fortune in the bite Fenrir Greyback had left him with. That had led to missed opportunities, lost jobs, discrimination, and so much pain. But that wasn’t all there was. That wasn’t all _he_ was.

Remus had been incredibly fortunate in just as many ways. He’d had parents who’d loved him; he’d been able to attend Hogwarts; he had loyal friends who didn’t care that he was a werewolf; he’d even found someone who loved him exactly as he was. That was more than many people ever had. It was definitely more than most werewolves ever got in their short, hard lives.

Good and bad luck alike. That, Remus supposed, was the wheel part of it. Ever turning, ever changing. 

This was supposed to represent him right now though, his present, his thoughts, his feelings, his life. The Wheel of Fortune, reversed. Remus narrowed his focus to the present, to what was going on around him, what he was feeling.

They were at war. That, of course, was ill fortune. Everything felt like it was going to shit. Like Sirius had said, people they knew and cared for were dying, their friends were in danger, and their relationship was so fucked up they were using a deck of cards as couples counseling. That was hardly unique to him though—except, perhaps, for that last bit. 

“Do you…do you want me to tell you what it’s supposed to mean?” Sirius asked. He seemed hesitant, like he was afraid of trying to put words in Remus’s mouth.

“Just give me a minute,” Remus said. 

He could make something up, or just disregard the card and its supposed meaning and tell Sirius how he felt right now, about himself, about everything.

He grabbed the bottle of whiskey, poured himself another drink, and looked at the images on the card. 

It was more abstract than the previous cards had been. There were no familiar figures here. The wheel itself was a flat looking disk inscribed with turning, circling runes and alchemical symbols that Remus didn’t know the meanings of. He could ask Sirius, but he found that he didn’t want to. He didn’t want Sirius to explain to him how he supposedly felt about himself, even if that wouldn’t be Sirius’s intent. 

Disregarding the symbols within the wheel, Remus looked outside of it. The wheel was drawn amidst the sky and clouds, floating through the air, and it was surrounded by animals. In the corners of the card Remus was surprised to find the four Hogwarts house mascots. He was fairly certain that wasn’t standard, but then, these were Sirius’s cards, and Hogwarts had played a large role in shaping his life, in shaping both of their lives. 

Aside from the lion, eagle, badger, and snake, two animal-human hybrid creatures clung to the wheel itself. A human-headed, cat-bodied sphinx sat, regal and serene atop the wheel. Across from it, at what would normally be the bottom of the wheel, was a human figure with a canine head. 

It didn’t look like a werewolf. The creature’s head was not a wolf’s head. It was too pointed with its tall ears and narrow snout—a dog, perhaps, though it didn’t look much like Padfoot either. Still, Remus felt a kinship with the creature that, if the card had been upright, would have looked like it was being crushed by the wheel. Even inverted, it lay across what was now the top of the wheel with none of the sphinx’s poise. It looked exhausted, or dead. Remus found he could relate to that as well.

“I feel…like there’s an impossible weight my chest,” Remus said. 

He was sure this wasn’t right. This probably wasn’t how the card was supposed to be read, but this was what he saw when he looked at it. This was what he felt when he couldn’t sleep at night. 

Sirius didn’t stop him, didn’t contradict or correct him. He just watched, and, more importantly, he listened. 

“I feel like it’s crushing me, like everything in the world is conspiring to push me down and keep me there, my face buried in the mud until I can’t breathe,” Remus said. His voice felt thin and tight and he swore he could feel that weight pressing on his chest right now, bent on suffocating him even in his own kitchen, this place he was supposed to feel safe, to call home.

“I can’t keep a job for more than a few months, and I don’t know that I ever will,” Remus gasped out. “I can’t see a future where I’m not stuck at the bottom of the wheel. I’m fighting in this war, and some days…some days I don’t even know _why_.”

He hesitated, expecting Sirius to jump in here, to shout about all the noble and valiant reasons they _had_ to fight. James and Sirius, even Peter and Lily, had always had a purity to their convictions that Remus envied. He felt guilty that he didn’t share their righteousness, but he couldn’t. Sirius didn’t say a word though. He watched Remus, but there was no judgment on his open face. Perhaps he was still reeling from his own card. 

Remus looked back over at the Eight of Swords where the tiny, painted version of Sirius was still battering himself against the blades. He would do so until he dropped dead, if such a thing was possible for a tarot card. It was certainly true for Sirius. He would fight until he was dead, no matter how futile it was. 

Remus wasn’t sure he had the strength to do the same.

“It doesn’t really matter who wins and who loses this war, not for me,” Remus said. “Voldemort? The Ministry? They both hate what I am. They both think I’m dangerous, that I’m not human, that I’m _lesser_. I’m risking my life fighting to protect people who want to register me like an animal, keep me from getting an education or finding work, who would sleep sounder if I were dead. I’m risking my bloody life, and…and…_what’s in it for me?_”

Remus buried his face in his hands and closed his eyes to try and keep back tears. He hadn’t meant to say that much. He hadn’t meant to let those feelings out. They were selfish and terrible and most of the time he didn’t even believe them. Most of the time wasn’t all of the time though.

Across the table, Sirius sucked in a breath. If he hadn’t already suspected Remus of being the traitor they all knew was hiding in the Order, Remus had probably just given him some very good reasons to worry…or to leave.

“Remus…” Sirius said. It sounded like a plea, like the beginning of a question.

Swiping quickly at his eyes, Remus raised his head and stared defiantly across the table. Sirius looked pale and shaken, uncertain. The rage and fire Remus had seen in him when discussing his own card had drained away. One of Sirius’s hands hovered a few inches off the table like he wanted to reach out and comfort Remus. When he saw the look in Remus’s eyes though it dropped back down.

“You’ve never said…” Sirius whispered. “I knew it was hard for you…I thought I knew, but…I’m sorry.”

Remus didn’t know what to do with that apology. He knew it was sincere though. Sirius had never meant to hurt him. He hadn’t intended to misunderstand or underestimate Remus’s struggles. He’d just never had to consider these things for himself. Sirius was a pure-blooded, fully human wizard. If he hadn’t chosen to take such a strong stand against Voldemort the outcome of this war wouldn’t have made much of a difference to him either because he would have come out on top of the wheel no matter which side won.

“We won’t stand for it to stay that way, you know that, right?” Sirius said. The uncertainty in his voice was gone. It had hardened into a promise. Remus looked up and saw steel in his eyes and in the set of his jaw. “James, Lily, Peter, and me, and bunches of other people too. We won’t just kick Voldemort in his shriveled cock and let things go back to the way they were before. There’s so many things that were wrong even before Voldemort came along, and we’ll start our own damn war if that’s what it takes to make things better.”

Because that was who Sirius was, for better _and_ for worse. He was a fighter. He took stands. Remus looked back at the Eight of Swords sitting beside his own Wheel of Fortune. 

He bit his lip and reached for his whiskey glass.

“You should turn over the next card,” Remus said.


	4. Knight of Swords, Reversed & Eight of Cups, Upright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Knight of Swords, reversed: Recklessness, lack of focus, disregard of consequences, cruel tendencies, aggression  
Eight of Cups, Upright: Abandonment, loneliness, withdrawal, fatigue, disappointment

They took a moment before moving on. Remus refilled their glasses with more whiskey, and they drank in silence for a long, painful minute while they both tried to reel their emotions back in. The raw, aching look on Remus’s face echoed Sirius’s discomfort, and he could trace his own fears in the furrows of Remus’s brow and the tension around his mouth. Neither of them had planned to reveal as much as they had, to make themselves so vulnerable. And it was only going to get worse.

The next two cards were going to hurt. Sirius knew it even before he turned his own card over. The polite wording he remembered from his divination text book described the fifth and sixth cards in this spread as representing each person’s “respective negative contributions to the current situation.”

In other words, these cards were supposed to show what he and Remus had each done to fuck up their relationship so badly.

Sirius braced himself as he revealed his card. Then, he laughed. It was that same bitter, half-hysterical laughter that had bubbled up out of his chest as he’d talked about the Eight of Swords. It would seem he couldn’t escape his own self-destructiveness, or the suit of swords. 

“It’s me,” he said through laughter that was almost a sob. Remus looked confused and more than a little concerned, like maybe Sirius had finally and inevitably lost the plot. Sirius pointed at the card he’d just turned over. “It’s me,” he repeated. “The very worst parts of me.”

“I don’t understand,” Remus said. There was a frustrated note of impatience to his voice, and why shouldn’t there be? Remus had been dealing with Sirius at his worst for a while now. How could he not be frustrated? 

Biting back another fit of laughter, Sirius found he was trembling. “The Knight of Swords, reversed,” Sirius said, nodding to the card. “Me, at my worst.”

The card was upside-down, but it depicted a fully-armored knight brandishing a longsword. He was mounted on a hippogriff and both mount and rider looked fierce and half-wild. Wind whipped at the hippogriff’s feathers and the plume on the knight’s helmet. In the background, storm clouds churned and lightning flashed. 

“The court cards in the minor arcana often indicate people. After a while, I sort of came to associate most of them with actual people,” Sirius said. “We’re the knights cards: you, me, Peter, and James. James is the Knight of Wands, Peter’s Pentacles, you’re Cups, and I’m Swords. Reversed, the Knight of Swords symbolizes me and all my worst traits.”

Meaning Sirius had destroyed his relationship with Remus, had brought it to this near tragicomical tipping point just by being himself.

Sirius reached down and flicked the card. The knight bristled, raising his sword for a swing, and the hippogriff snapped at a finger it could never reach.

“Go on,” Sirius said to the card. “Show him.”

The knight reached up and pulled off his helmet. Once again, it was Sirius. This time, his eyes were wild and his teeth bared in something between a snarl and a cruel sneer. 

Unlike with the Eight of Swords, Remus didn’t seem surprised to see Sirius on this card, upside down and glaring out at the world like he wanted to raze it all to the ground. Remus’s face took on that blank, almost mask-like quality that Sirius hated, and he felt a spark of that same directionless fury that shone on his card burble up alongside the mad laughter.

Remus nodded. It was a quiet, subtle gesture clearly meant only for himself, but Sirius saw it. “What does it mean?” Remus asked.

“What do _you_ think it means?” Sirius shot back.

“I never took Divination,” Remus said diplomatically. “I don’t know what any of these cards mean.”

Sirius shrugged and spread his arms wide. “Maybe not, but after ten years, you know me. What am I, Remus? What am I like at my worst?”

Remus sat up straighter. His face was still so spitefully blank. “Sirius, I don’t want to—”

“Yes, I think you do, Remus,” Sirius said.

Finally, something moved behind Remus’s mask. A quicksilver flash of irritation in his brown eyes. “What do you want me to say, Sirius?” Remus asked icily.

He was angry now, genuinely angry. Remus always went cold and hard when he was angry, unlike Sirius, who burned hot and violent.

“I want you to tell me the truth, Remus!” Sirius snapped. He could feel the flames licking up from his chest. He swore he could taste their heat in his throat, on his tongue. He hated it. He was staring down at proof that his worst impulses were tearing apart his love with Remus, and still, he couldn’t stop that fire. 

“You can’t hurt me,” Sirius lied. “I already know what I am. I’m everything this damned card says I am—reckless and cruel and angry.” He wanted to look away, to run away, but he couldn’t. “I’ve hurt you before…” 

Remus winced, sucking in a short, sharp breath. They didn’t talk about that. The day Sirius had sent Snape to the Willow and almost destroyed everything. 

Sirius had been the epitome of the reversed Knight of Swords on that day. He’d been thoughtless and vindictive, unable to control his emotions or his tongue. He’d wanted to frighten a childhood rival for a laugh, and in his desire for that cruel, petty thrill he hadn’t even stopped to think what might happen to Snape if he actually confronted a fully-transformed werewolf, or what might happen to Remus.

Sirius didn’t understand Remus’s forgiveness. He’d been absurdly grateful for it and desperate to earn it, but to this day he didn’t understand it. He was puzzled by how any of his friends had ever managed to forgive him, but Remus in particular. Especially when Sirius had confessed his love the next year, and Remus had not rebuked him, had not said he could never love a broken and monstrous thing like Sirius. Instead, he’d come willingly—_happily_—into Sirius’s arms. 

Now, Remus felt like the foundation upon which Sirius’s world was built, and he kept waiting for it to crumble, for Remus to realize he’d made a mistake. 

Remus exhaled, and the mask cracked again. “The truth, Sirius,” he said, sounding almost prim, like he was about to explain how Sirius had mucked up the pronunciation of a spell. “The truth is that when I think of you at your worst—when I picture the version of you most likely to hurt me—I don’t see this—” He pointed at the Knight of Swords. “—I see _that_.”

To Sirius’s surprise, he reached out and flicked the Eight of Swords so it spun out of its place in the spread, knocking into Sirius’s fingers at the edge of the table.

“I see you destroying yourself without any thought to what it does to the people around you—without any thought for yourself. Yes, at your worst, Sirius, you can be reckless and cruel, thoughtless with a terrible temper, but you turn those things against yourself far more than you turn them against anyone else—friend or foe alike.”

His words hit hard, slicing Sirius open as deep as any sword. 

“I am _afraid_,” Remus continued. “Not of you, Sirius, but for you. Every mission you leave on, every time there’s trouble, or even the whisper of a fight, you go running toward danger, and you do it with a smile on your face.”

Remus raised a hand to cover his mouth, as though he wanted to stop himself from speaking. 

This was not what Sirius had expected. He’d expected Remus to unearth feelings of anger or betrayal forgiven but never forgotten; old resentments left to fester slowly over the years. He could have understood that, but not this. How could it be Remus’s fear for him that was tearing their love apart?

“We’re at war,” Sirius protested, finally finding his voice. “We agreed to join the Order—we all did—and we knew what we were signing up for. Danger, battles, the possibility of death—”

“Not like this!” Remus interrupted. His hand dropped from his mouth to slap against the table, loud and jarring enough that Sirius almost reached for his wand on instinct. “Not like you do! Good god, Sirius, if you could see your face when you’re firing curses or chasing Death Eaters. It’s the only time you laugh anymore. We’re all fighting a war, Sirius, but you take unnecessary risks and I’m terrified you’re going to get yourself killed. Even worse, sometimes it feels like that’s what you want—to die heroically, to fucking martyr yourself so you never have to worry about becoming _this again._” 

He picked up the Knight of Swords and tossed it toward Sirius. It landed right on top of the Eight of Swords. Sirius looked down at them both and grimaced. 

Remus wasn’t wrong, but he didn’t understand. Sirius didn’t have a death wish. He didn’t _want_ to die, but these were dangerous times and they’d put themselves directly in the line of fire when they joined the Order. People had already died, and they were going to keep dying until this fight was won. That was just the reality of their situation, and…

And if someone had to die, Sirius would rather it was him than any of his friends. Was that so wrong?

Everyone had to die sometime, right? Sirius just wanted to make his death mean something…because he wasn’t sure he knew how to make his life mean something.

Sirius picked up the Knight of Swords and put it back in its proper place, exposing the Eight of Swords below it. A fitting pair. Sirius’s fears, his feelings of helplessness drove that desperate recklessness Remus feared so much. Those two parts of him were so intertwined Sirius wasn’t sure he could find where one ended and the other began.

He put the Eight of Swords back into the spread. His next card was supposed to tell him what he needed to do to fix things, but Sirius couldn’t imagine a single card in the entire tarot deck that could tell him how to sort out this mess in his head. 

Across from him, Remus was staring into the last mouthful of whiskey at the bottom of his glass. Sirius took advantage of the moment and let himself _feel_. Everything he felt for Remus rushed up like a tidal wave, an ocean of love. Sirius could drown in everything he felt for Remus.

He would die for this man. He would do it without question or hesitation. Sirius only wished he knew how to translate those feelings into a life together, because a person couldn’t grow old drowning like this. Everything was too raw, too intense to be sustainable. 

Remus sighed and drained the last bit of his whiskey before pushing the glass away. “Do you have any idea what it would do to me if I lost you, Sirius?” Remus asked.

Sirius swallowed. That familiar spark of anger flared for a moment. What sort of question was that? Sirius literally felt like he was drowning in his love for Remus, could Remus not feel that? Did Remus not know he had the power to utterly destroy Sirius in a million ways with only a word or a gesture?

“I know that feeling better than you can imagine, Remus,” Sirius retorted. “Why don’t you turn over your card, because I have a good feeling I know what it’s going to show us.”

Frowning, Remus reached over to do just that.

***

By now, Remus really should have been used to the hairpin turns Sirius’s mood could take. Truth be told, he usually liked them. Sirius had always breathed life into everything around him. He crackled with wild, electric energy, and he swept Remus off his feet over and over again. Most of the time Remus liked that too, but sometimes it terrified him.

One moment, Sirius was simmering with fury and pushing conflict, baiting Remus to draw the next card. An instant later, his hand shot across the table, stopping Remus before he could even touch the card. He looked suddenly distraught. 

“Wait. Just…just wait a moment, please,” Sirius said. He took Remus’s hand in both of his, squeezing hard enough to almost be painful. “I love you. No matter what…No matter what that card says or how much of a bastard I am sometimes…or anything else…I love you.”

All those cold, sharp emotions crowding and pricking at Remus’s insides melted just a little. He always melted for Sirius, even when he shouldn’t.

Remus sighed and raised their joined hands to his lips. He pressed a kiss to the back of Sirius’s thumb, right over the knuckle. “I love you too,” he said before pulling his own hand out of Sirius’s, “but we’re going to need more than that to fix things.”

Leaning back until his chair was up on two wobbly legs, Sirius scrubbed a hand down the side of his cheek, fingernails scraping against his untidy stubble. “You know, growing up I thought things were supposed to get easy when you were in love.”

Remus huffed out a breathy laugh. He hadn’t meant for it to be cruel or dismissive, but Sirius winced like his laughter stung. “I know it’s stupid. I was a kid and I thought, I _wished_…” He was chewing on his lower lip. “Everything was so difficult with my family and I knew they didn’t love me like parents are supposed to love their children. I thought it must be easier for other people. I thought love must make everything easier.”

“It’s not stupid,” Remus replied. “Real life is just more complicated than that.” His parents had loved each other very much, but they’d still disagreed and fought. Remus had grown up believing that love was a complicated but ultimately unconditional thing. 

Perhaps that was a naïve worldview as well. Remus knew he loved Sirius with all his heart; that was total and unconditional, utterly endless without reservation. There were limits though. 

Remus would always love Sirius. For the rest of his life he was going to love Sirius. No matter what else happened, Sirius would always hold his heart, his soul. 

And yet…

There were days when Remus could see himself leaving. He could imagine himself walking away from their relationship and this life they were building together.

Remus wasn’t surprised to see that reflected on his next card when he reached out and turned it over. The card showed Remus himself, wrapped in a traveling cloak. He stood next to their kitchen table, which was not covered in cards. Instead, it held an empty bottle of wine and eight glasses. Some of the wineglasses held a few dregs of wine left over, others had been overturned, one was even broken, half of it lying in shattered pieces across the tabletop. 

“Sometimes…” Sirius said so quietly Remus might not have heard him if he hadn’t been holding his own breath. “Sometimes it feels like you’ve already left me.”

The Remus on the card surveyed the mess on the table sadly, but instead of trying to clean it up, he raised the hood of his cloak and turned his back on the scene, walking out the door and into the night. He didn’t need Sirius to explain this card to him, he could see its meaning written across Sirius’s face—disappointment and abandonment—and feel it deep in his own soul—loneliness and withdrawal.

“You go out on missions I know nothing about, and I don’t know when you’ll be back or if you’re in danger…I feel like I’m always waiting for the day you don’t return. I’m always wondering if it’s happened without me ever knowing.”

Remus swallowed. Those words cut deeper than a curse. “You said it yourself, Sirius,” Remus said, hating how defensive he sounded. It reminded him of that long gone figure on the card, the way he’d squared his shoulders and clenched his jaw before he’d turned away from both the messy flat and the messy relationship within it. “We’re at war…it’s dangerous. Sometimes people don’t come home.”

Just within the Order the list of people who were never coming home to their loved ones was tragically long. 

Sirius looked up at him, brow furrowed. “I know, Remus, and I’m afraid of that too, but I feel like I’m waiting for the day you _choose_ not to come back.”

Shocked, Remus drew back so abruptly, his chair legs scraped and screeched across the floor. “Why would you think that?” He asked, trying to forget that he’d just been questioning his own commitment to their relationship a minute before—trying to ignore that he’d been questioning it for months now. 

It wasn’t about Sirius, Remus told himself both then and now. He loved Sirius. Even when it was difficult, being with Sirius and being loved by Sirius, those were the best things in Remus’s life. He just wasn’t sure it was the best thing for Sirius. 

Remus had always known their relationship was not one of equals, no matter how hard Sirius tried to ignore those facts. Remus was always going to be lesser, he was always going to be a burden, an embarrassment to his lover. Other people would look at the two of them and wonder why someone as vivacious and brilliant as Sirius was with someone as sad and sickly as Remus. He’d imagined their whispers, the snickers hidden behind hands, the accusing glares. 

Then there was the inevitable physical decline. Lycanthropy took its toll on the body. Remus was already finding grey hairs at his temples, and his joints cracked and ached like those of a man twice his age. Werewolves rarely grew old, and they almost never did so gracefully or healthily. Even if they stayed together and lived through this war, Remus would only get sicker and weaker with each passing year, each decade. He didn’t doubt for a moment that Sirius would stay by his side. Sirius was loyal as a dog even in human form. He would stick by Remus no matter what. Sometimes it seemed cruel to chain Sirius to that future. 

When he thought of leaving, it wasn’t in anger or despair; it was an act of mercy. At least, that’s what he tried to tell himself.

“How could I not think that, Remus?” Sirius asked, another half-hysterical laugh undercutting his words. “You accused me of throwing myself into every fight that comes my way, and maybe you’re right, but you—Remus, you’ll fight for everyone and everything except yourself. Of course I’m afraid you would rather walk away than fight for us.”

Remus’s jaw clenched, teeth grinding. “It’s not that simple, Sirius. You talked about starting another war, one to make the world a better place for me, but you have no clue what you’re talking about,” he said. Both of their eyes went back to the upside-down Wheel of Fortune. “Werewolves aren’t allowed to get angry and fight. That just scares the normal people. It makes us nothing more than rabid animals that need to be put down for the good of society.”

Sirius huffed a sigh. “So maybe your war doesn’t involve curses flying in the streets or firebombing Ministry offices. I don’t have answers or even a plan, and I shouldn’t be the one in charge anyway, because you’re right, Remus, I’m not a werewolf. I love you and I want to do everything I can to empathize and support you and everyone else in your position, but I don’t know what you go through, how much you’re hurting, but part of that disconnect is because you don’t talk to me about it.”

He was watching Remus with a fierceness that was entirely grounded in love. Sirius really was a dog in all the best ways. No doubt he would take a bite out of anyone who threatened or hurt Remus, he might even do it literally. This was why Remus had stayed so long, even through all his doubts, all the days when he believed Sirius would be better off without him, because being loved by Sirius was the best thing in the world. 

Remus looked back up at the Knight of Swords. Maybe that was Sirius at his worst, but Remus could imagine that card right-side up and see all the wonderful things that made up Sirius as well.

“The world might be against you, Remus,” Sirius said, his voice gentled, “but I’m not the rest of the world. I’ll never be against you. I want to be by your side for everything, but it feels like you won’t let me.” He let out a long sigh and seemed to deflate around it. Remus hated the sight of Sirius hurting and shrinking into himself.

“That’s not my intention, Sirius,” Remus said. Intentions only counted for so much though, and it was clear his were falling short. He was hurting Sirius while trying to protect them both. Looking at the Eight of Cups and the Knight of Swords, Remus wondered if they might not be two sides of the same wretched coin. Sirius charging into fights to try and protect the people he loved, and Remus withdrawing to try and do the same. 

“I know that,” Sirius said. “I know you’re not trying to shut me out any more than I’m trying to make you worry, but you are, Remus. You said you’re afraid for me, well so am I. I’m so afraid of losing you…I’m so afraid of life without you. I—I don’t know if I can do it, and I know that’s not fair to you, but—” He cut himself off, throat working as he swallowed. He gazed up at Remus with eyes so sad Remus felt his own heart break.

How terrible was it that his first instinct was to turn and run? Somehow, despite the very words coming out of Sirius’s mouth, Remus still felt like it would hurt less if he put distance between himself and Sirius. Only it wouldn’t, it would just give Remus enough room to smother his own feelings and bury them deep in his heart. That was its own sort of selfishness though, because Sirius either couldn’t or wouldn’t do the same. He didn’t swallow his pain and anger like Remus did so much of the time. He didn’t let himself be crushed beneath the Wheel of Fortune. He fought back, tooth and nail. He became that Knight of Swords for both better and worse.

Why couldn’t Remus be that brave, that open? Why was it so damn difficult to be the sort of partner Sirius deserved? Why was it so damn difficult to even _try_?

Sirius leaned back and gave another despairing chuckle. “Fuck, we’re a pair, aren’t we?”

“We are,” Remus agreed. They shared a bitter smile at that, but Remus couldn’t make it stick. “Do you think we can fix it?” He asked.

Sirius shrugged but said, “I want to try.”

There it was. This was the opening, the moment Remus could either pull back or step up.

Instinct was still telling him to run, but he was a Gryffindor, and courage wasn’t always about lacking fear. More often than not, it was about facing that fear. Sirius had said the next two cards were supposed to show them what they both needed to do to save their relationship, and it would be the height of cowardice to come this far through all the pain the cards had inflicted on them and not see if there was some hope to be found.

Remus nodded. Sirius returned his nod and reached for the next card.


End file.
